EDITORIAL
BY T E R R E N C E O ' K E E F E
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The impact of
'pet parents' on
poultry welfare
May 2017 ❙ www.WATTAgNet.com
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Javier Brosch | Bigstockphoto.com
The U.S. layer industry is following in the footsteps of the European layer
industry on the path away from conventional cages for housing hens. This conversion is coming about largely as a result of the lobbying of major retail and
foodservice egg purchasers by animal welfare/rights groups. As someone who
studied the behavior of laying hens in graduate school, but who also has a business degree and experience in large-scale meat bird production, I have been
somewhat puzzled by these developments.
I attended Petfood Forum for
the first time this year, and several presenters discussed how to
market cat and dog foods to "pet
parents." Yes, the highest level
of attachment to ones' pet is no
longer being a pet lover; you are
a pet parent.
Pet parents don't just treat
their pets as valuable complements to family life; they are,
in many cases, substitutes for
children and are truly considered as part of the family. Once I heard frequent
discussion of this high level of emotional attachment to pets and that this market
segment is growing rapidly, I knew this was probably the other piece of the farm
animal welfare attitude shift puzzle.
We all know that less than 2 percent of people work on farms, and most consumers have no direct contact with anyone who raises farm animals. I knew that
consumers' attitudes about their pets influenced how they thought other animals
should be raised, but now it seems that the level of humanization of pets by their
owners has gone up a notch higher than I had suspected.
People who buy clothes for their dogs have different attitudes about farm
animal welfare than do people who keep their dogs in pens in the backyard.
Successful pet food marketers play to the emotional connection consumers have
with their pets, but so do the welfare activists. ■
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